Perry's Arcana: A Facsimile Edition

2009. New hardcover with dustjacket. From 1810 to 1811, the English stonemason and amateur naturalist George Perry published a lavishly illustrated magazine on natural history. The Arcana or Museum of Nature ran to 22 monthly parts, with 84 extraordinary hand-colored plates and over 300 text pages describing mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, mollusks, echinoderms, insects, trilobites and plants, alongside travelogues from far-off lands. It presented the first published illustration of the koala and many new genera and species, but astonishingly was then largely forgotten for nearly two hundred years. Petit has collated and updated Perry's taxonomies, and much effort has gone into digitizing the original text and quaint illustrations. With a Collation and Explanatory Essay by Richard E. Petit.